What will your children cost?
What a child's costs add up to in freedom years, the heaviest year when children overlap, and how much later you reach your number.
What the children cost
Put in what you expect to pay
The boxes for a year of each stage are empty on purpose: this page states no average cost of raising a child. Put in what you expect to pay, or start from example figures.
Child 1
You
Left out on purpose: tax, any growth on the money set aside, interest on a cost met with debt, and what a child changes about your income (a parent working less is its own event). Costs that carry on past university, such as help with a first home, are separate events.
Keeps these settings as the start of your own plan, saved in this browser only. You see your figures, and anything it would change in a plan you already have, before they are added. What you have goes in as investments; split it under Your money.
The link carries your figures after the #, so you can save or share it. Your figures are not sent to us.
Questions people ask
- How much does it cost to raise a child?
- This page does not say. It publishes no average, because what a family spends differs by country and by family. You put in what you expect to pay a year in each stage, early years, school and university, and the page adds them up, prices them in freedom years and shows what they do to the date you reach your number.
- What is a stage?
- A child is the year school starts and the year university starts, with costs. Early years run from now to school, school to university, and university for the years you set. You choose the dates, so twins, adoption, a child already at school or a gap year need nothing special: set the years, or add another child.
- What does the price in freedom years mean?
- A stage's cost divided by the yearly cost of the life you chose. A freedom year is one year of that life. In the example above, the stages cost $132,000 in all over a $60,000-a-year life: 2.2 freedom years. It lets you set a child's costs against a break, a move or a wedding in one unit. It sits beside "covered" or "short by", never instead of it.
- What does covered mean?
- The money you have set aside for the children pays for the earliest stages first. A stage is covered when its share of that money is as much as its cost, and short by the difference otherwise. Money in an education account counts as set aside here. The rules and limits of those accounts differ by country and state, and this page does not state them.
- How is the date worked out?
- Month by month, in today's money, as the career break page works it. The costs in each year are paid from the money set aside first, then out of that month's saving, and from what you have when saving is not enough. Your number is the yearly cost of the life you chose divided by the withdrawal rate (4% is the usual starting point, from US market history over 30-year retirements; a longer retirement may need a lower rate). In the example above you reach it at age 60 and 4 months without the costs and 2 years 8 months later with them.
- What if the costs are more than I save?
- The heaviest year is named, and if it is more than a year of saving the page says so. The difference comes out of what you have. If that would take it below zero, the costs are paid for with debt: the page gives no date then, because it does not guess an interest rate.
- Does a parent working less count?
- Not here. Leaving work or working fewer hours is a change to your income, not a cost of the child, and it is a different event. Put the lower saving you expect into the saving box to see its effect.
Every cost on this page is the one you put in. The 4% rate is W. P. Bengen, “Determining Withdrawal Rates Using Historical Data”, Journal of Financial Planning (1994). The return above inflation and the example figures are assumptions you can change, not forecasts or averages.